Faith Is an Eternal Human Quest. Through

¶ … faith is an eternal human quest. Through all recorded history the determination of morals through a higher value has been sought. Through the analysis of the philosophy of the ancients a modern reader can glean at least a marginal understanding of the higher value of the question of faith. In the fragments of evidence left to the moderns through philosophers such as St. Anselm and St. Aquinas there can be found the foundation of ethical philosophy.

These two proofs or set so f proofs for the existence of God are ones that have been studied for centuries and will continue to be studied eternally. The system of ethics is realistically something that has been used to reflect back on a time when the establishment of that system was still emerging even as it is today. Though the system is fluctuating it is also not all-together fluid and is always ultimately guided by the goal of cementing the moral right and wrong of determination and/or action.

In Anselm's and Aquinas' proofs issues of the ethical questions or moral questions are secondary to the greater reason for moral action. The greater question of the existence of God and more importantly a God who would evaluate and arbitrate the issues himself and demand accountancy for the actions driven by ethics is the issue at stake. Anselm establishes his ethical argument by determining that the greatest conceivable being must exist or he would not be conceivable as the greatest.

The line of argument has been analyzed widely and countless attempts have been made to debunk it as circular reasoning. Yet, the validity is substantial and records a premise that can rarely be disbanded. "And it assuredly exists so truly, that it cannot be conceived not to exist.

For, it is possible to conceive cannot be conceived not to exist; and this is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist." (Anselm) Anselm assures us that though a man can deny understanding of God or even belief in god, he still can conceive of the idea of the greatest conceivable being and if he can conceive of the greatest conceivable being than that being must exist and cannot be denied because his mere conception requires his existence to be so.

Through a system of ethics Anselm determines that there cannot be a way to deny God even without knowledge of him and even with the injection of moral inaction. Though Anselm does not speak here of moral action, he may elsewhere. What he does say is that man cannot negate the existence of the Lord through immoral actions or through the denial of the existence of the Lord. Aquinas develops the thoughts further through an even more systematic representation of the questions.

Though he acknowledges the ability of a person to act through morals or to act without them he makes clear through his five proofs that the mere existence of change, causation contingency that there is a degree of excellence and that that degree is determined by purpose and/or design. Because something changes there must be causation and to determine the causation there must be a contingency or interdependence among both change and cause and all those causes and changes that have influenced or determined them.

These three elements change, causation and contingency interact to determine degrees of excellence and through these degrees of excellence a greater design is implied. In summation Aquinas gives further testament to his system by asserting the conscious and unconscious acceptance of the way things happen. "When diverse things.